The Exquisite and Immaculate Grace of Carmen Espinoza

by Rebecca Taylor

  I pulled my eyes from the twelve foot angel and gave Sergio a questioning look.

  “Comparsa,” he said again as if this explained everything. When I continued to stare blankly he laughed and shook his head. “You don’t speak any Spanish.”

  Sergio was only twelve, but still, my face flushed and I could feel the embarrassment over my ignorance begin to grow. Anger flashed in my chest and I turned my face back to the crowds passing before us. He’s teasing you Carmen. He’s teasing, nothing more. Let it go. Always I had to give myself these calm down talks.

  Oblivious to my battle, Sergio tried to explain, “Comparsa is like a carnival group. They dress up…with masks. Once it gets darker they will parade down the streets.”

  Still not trusting myself to say anything, I continued my stony stare into the crowd. Sergio shifted uncomfortably, his eyes focused on me. “You’re mad,” he said.

  “No I’m not,” I said still staring ahead, a family with three small children dressed as vampires walked by.

  “Yes you are,” he said turning to watch the other children pass us. “I can always tell.”

  Surprised, I turned to him, “You can?”

  “I can too,” Anna, who hardly ever said anything to me added. “But mostly you’re just sad.”

  Feeling exposed, I stared at them both. Since I had been here, I hadn’t really given much thought to either one of them—and this was the first time I’d ever been alone with them.

  “Come on,” Sergio said taking his little sister’s hand. “Let’s go find a seat before they all fill up.”

  I nodded my head and forced a small smile. We joined the crowds flowing down the street, searching for the best spots to view the parade of mummers that would begin as soon as the sun had dropped far enough below the horizon. Only in the dark would the people cloaked as death shake and dance in the attempt to coax the souls of loved ones to return to the living families who loved them.

  Hand in hand, Sergio and Anna led the way through the crowd in front of me. Twice Sergio pulled his sister closer to him when the crowd threatened to separate them. I trailed after them, mesmerized, wondering what it felt like to be them.

  What was life like for Anna? She had the love of her whole family—what did that feel like?

  But most girls had that.

  Most girls did get normal lives and not crazy mothers. And because their mothers were not busy reading the bible every spare second of the day, these girls knew how to dress and do their makeup, these girls knew how to make friends.

  As I followed them, the thoughts spun faster until the injustices of my life collected into a tight ball at the base of my throat. There was my mother, disheveled and mumbling scripture, forbidding me from every experience that might otherwise have trained me to function like a normal person. My father, who I barely remembered, the man who escaped into a life without my mother but didn’t care enough to rescue me as well.

  And Daniel. Always the specter of Daniel hung over everything. He was the shroud that blocked out the light so nothing could grow right.

  I again thought of the picture in my bag, blonde hair blazing, happy and smiling—dead. Did Daniel and I once hold hands like Sergio and Anna?

  The crowd pushed in around us and a panic rushed though my veins as people filled the spaces between me and the kids.

  I was going to lose them.

  Suddenly, a small hand reached through the mass of people and found mine. The touch shocked me, but when I looked, I could see it was Anna’s hand. Her small fingers curled around mine

  “I don’t want to lose you,” she shouted so I would hear before she began pulling me after them through the crowd.

  The force of her tiny gesture hit me like a wave and a small sob erupted from my mouth.

  With my head low and my hair hiding my face, I clung to her small hand, thankful the chaos all around us masked my tears long enough for me to calm my self down.

  Sergio spotted an empty spot along the parade route and dragged us through the throng of jostling bodies. Once we had settled between a man masked as a sharp toothed clown and an elderly woman holding an enormous bouquet of mums, Anna dropped my hand. Immediately, I missed the secure warmth of it.

  By degrees, people began to slow their movements, find a place. Children dressed as tiny skeletons and devils brandishing plastic pitchforks chased each other in the street as the sun disappeared. It went completely, dragging even the last rays of evening far away to some other remote and foreign place on the other side of the world. In its absence, the flickering magic of a thousand candles lit, as if on cue, by the revelers all over Oaxaca illuminating the night. The cool came in on a wave. Like an unexpected current in an otherwise warm ocean.

  Next to me, Anna shivered and crossed her arms. I pulled my bag off my back and dug through it until I found my sweatshirt crumpled at the bottom and handed it to her. “Here,” I said. “You look cold.”

  She smiled at me before taking it and threading her tiny arms through the too big sleeves. “Thank you,” she said as she snuggled down and pulled the fabric over her knees.

  A ten foot ghoul approached on stilted legs. The leather strap around his neck supported a tray filled with covered cups. Sergio reached into his back pocket and propelled himself up and off the curb. In front of the ghoul, Sergio raised three fingers and handed the vender some cash. A moment later, he was heading back to us with steaming cups of something and a self satisfied smile. Anna and I both smiled back and waited to see what he had.

  Behind him, on the other side of the street, a flash of red caught my eye.

  I scanned the crowd until I saw it again, for a moment, behind a family of painted faces—a small child was receding.

  A small boy with bright blonde hair.

  I stood and stared, trying to keep focus on the red shirt that would randomly appear and then disappear among the mass of spectators.

  “Hey,” Sergio said next to me. “I got us some hot chocolate.”

  Anna bounced up from her seat and took her cup between her hands.

  I glanced briefly at the two remaining steaming cups in his hands before continuing my search through the crowd. There, I saw him! He was right there, right next to the woman rocking the baby in her arms. Only now, he was gone again.

  Sergio stood at my shoulder and aimed his gaze in the direction of mine. “What are you looking for?” he asked.

  “What? Oh…” Reluctantly, I stopped scanning. I shook my head, and took one of the cups from his hand. “Nothing. It was nothing,” I explained as we sat back down.

  “It didn’t look like nothing. You should have seen the expression on your face—like you’d seen a ghost.”

  “Well that makes perfect sense then because there are thousands of ghosts here.”

  “I meant a real one.”

  I took a sip from my chocolate but jerked my head back when the scalding liquid burned my tongue. “Ow!”

  Sergio removed the lid from his cup, “I guess we should let them cool down.”

  Again, my attention was drawn. My eyes rose above the cup in my hands, past the children running in the street, to the place directly across from me. There, standing in front of the crowd, staring back at me. I saw him. His red shirt like blood in the cool candlelit night. Fear dripped through my veins, coursed through my body until it stopped my breath and made my hands numb. There was no mistaking. No, almost. He stood before me blazing with impossibility.

  It was Daniel.

  Chapter Four

  Into the Desert

  When he turned and ran, I jumped up.

  Anna grabbed my hand, “Hey!”

  I looked down at our hands and then into her surprised expression.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  My gaze returned to the ally Daniel had disappeared down. He was nowhere—I’d lost sight of him.

  I looked back into Anna’s eyes and thought up a lie. “I want some pan de muerto.” I slipped my hand from her gra
sp and took a step away. “I saw a vendor down the street. Do you want some?”

  “The parade’s about to start,” Sergio said.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said already moving across the street to where I had last seen Daniel.

  “Don’t you need your bag?” Sergio asked.

  I stopped and headed back, “Right.” I smiled at him, slung the pack onto my back and left before he could say anything else.

  “Hurry back,” he warned. “Once it starts you’ll get stuck on the other side!”

  I raised my hand over my shoulder in distracted understanding and continued across the street. Once I managed to get past the crowd of people on the other side of the street waiting for the parade to start, I stopped and looked back at Sergio and Anna. They weren’t watching me. They were talking to the old woman sitting next to then and when I saw Anna laugh and smile at something she said, I rushed into the alley after Daniel.

  It was dark and the sound of my running feet echoed inside the narrow brick lined passage. The alley seemed to stretch in front of me and looked much longer than I would have guessed from the street. The further in I pushed, the more the lights and noise from the street diminished behind me. By the time I reached the end, the life bustling on the busy Oaxacan street felt like an echo from where I’d come.

  I stopped and looked back, surprised by the actual distance between me and what seemed like a pin prick of existence. A cheer from the crowd rose up and traveled towards me, the sound falling away foot by foot, until all that was left was a remnant whisper of the joy that had erupted in the street.

  The parade had begun.

  In front of me, the view laid out at the end of the alley surprised me. The city stopped here. Before me was the dry expanse of Mexican desert. Tufts of scrub grass and larger Yucca bushes glowed silver in the moonlight.

  Something wasn’t right.

  True, I didn’t know the city as well as the other exchange students, I couldn’t guide anyone to the best coffee house or explain how different civilizations impacted the city’s development, but I knew enough to realize that the concrete and brick of Oaxaca shouldn’t end here. A bright yellow bird drifted past and landed on a dead white twig, like the bone of a finger pointing into the night, stretching from a scrabble of bush. The bird rested for only a moment before the thrust of its wings carried it back into the night.

  Confusion fogged my reason—Why had I come down here? Had I really believed that I had seen my dead brother?

  I scanned the desert before me, for the first time since rushing after Daniel, fear rose up inside me. The empty desert didn’t belong here. I knew for certain that at another time, on another day, traveling down this alley would have delivered me onto another Oaxaca street, alive with the people who lived and worked there.

  I should go back.

  With the thought, I fell back a step, and then another. I would go back and try to make my way across the already started parade. Sergio and Anna were waiting for me, probably wondering what was taking so long, worried that I was now stuck on the other side.

  Something moved. In the distance, on the crest of a low hill, I could make out his crouched form shrouded by the night. The curve of his tiny shoulders, the back of his neck and blonde hair. Like he was looking for something in the dirt—or trying to hide.

  “Daniel,” his name was only a whisper on my lips but his head turned towards me. Alerted to my presence, he stood and stared back at me.

  “Daniel,” I called louder this time. I felt his eyes on me, burning through the night, but he stood still as stone.

  “Daniel,” I stumbled forward, tripping on the crumbs of concrete that gave way to the desert’s dirt and rock. I kept my eyes on him, afraid that if I looked away, even for a moment, he’d disappear again. A phantom unable to maintain a presence in reality, a figment of my own clouded imagination. My clumsy feet ran over wobbly rocks and through clumps of dry desert grasses that challenged my balance while my heart, unused for strenuous physical activity, threatened to explode in my chest. But the closer I got, the clearer I could see him, it really was Daniel. Standing there, watching me run, waiting for me, completely untouched by the last thirteen years. I wondered if when I finally reached him and stretched out my arms to hold him, if he would evaporate before me, like a mirage on the horizon.

  When I had covered half the distance between us, he turned and ran down the hill’s far side. Shocked, I stopped for only a moment before redoubling my efforts, pushing my legs faster up the hill. He was frightened and I would lose him if I didn’t hurry.

  My lungs burned on the dry air. At the crest, I allowed myself to stop, my breath gasping and erratic, my hands rested on my knees as I bent forward and willed my heart to slow into a reasonable rhythm. I could still see him, twice as far away as he had been before, the distance he had covered was impossible. Of course the thought was stupid, what about any of this was even remotely possible in the first place?

  His running slowed until he reached a cluster of large candelabra cacti blocking his path. He would need to walk pretty far either left or right in order to go around them. His head turned again until his eyes found me up on the hill he’d just left and again, it was as if I could feel his eyes on me. A moment later, he darted straight into the cluster of cacti.

  I stood straight up, “Daniel!” I shouted. What was he doing? How could he just plunge into what was surely a cluster of needle sharp spines. I imagined him trapped and stung by a thousand barbs and took a step to run towards him.

  I stopped.

  Somewhere behind me, there had been a parade. I turned full circle to see the way I’d come, what I saw held my breath tight in my chest.

  In every direction, for as far as I could see, there was only desert. It was a mistake, somehow I’d missed seeing the entire city of Oaxaca that I had only moments before been standing in the middle of. I turned again and again, my eyes sweeping the landscape for some sign of life other than the desperate blades of wild grasses. I couldn’t find it.

  When my breath returned it came in quick, bright bursts of panic exploding in my chest. I was a pin prick, a speck of dust in the center of what looked like a great wilderness of isolation. I felt swallowed.

  What was happening to me?

  I turned back towards the cacti that had captured Daniel and ran as fast as I could.

  When I reached the wall of spines I called out to him again. “Daniel,” fear made my voice ragged. “Daniel, it’s me, Carmen.”

  Would he even remember who I was?

  “I’m your sister. Are you okay? Where are you?” My legs paced quickly back and forth in front of the web of crossed needled arms while I searched for signs of him, a scrap of shirt caught on a barb, the flash of his golden hair. He had to be hurt, wouldn’t I hear his crying?

  And then I saw it. I had walked past it at least three times before. Low to the ground, right where I had seen him dive in, there was a tunnel into the cacti. The space was small, only a couple feet wide and tall. I got down on my hands and knees and peered into the black hole before me. Rocks and sand dug into my flesh.

  “Daniel!” I called. “Are you in there? Are you okay?” I moved closer and listened for an answer that didn’t come. “Daniel?” doubt echoed through the word.

  A scrabbling sound, like shoes on the dirt, came from the hole. Moving closer, I strained my hearing towards the empty space, hoping that the sound was coming closer to me, that Daniel was on his way out.

  The longer I listened, the fainter the sound became. I sat back on my knees, brushed the sand and small rocks from my palms, and took a deep breath that, when it finally escaped, left me deflated and feeling shaky. My eyes closed. If I didn’t think about it, that would be the best way. Just do it quickly, keep moving, and don’t think about it.

  I really didn’t want to go in there.

  Back on my hands and knees, I crawled into the dark and tiny tunnel. My arms, limp from fear, didn’t feel like they were capable
of carrying me very far. By the time I was in up to my waist, the faint moonlight that had illuminated the entrance was completely blocked out. I stopped and tried again. “Daniel, please,” my voice came out in a whisper. Shaking all over now, I fought the urge to go back by forcing one of my hands a few inches further. Then a knee. Every part of me shifted forward while my mounting terror begged me to run back into the open and arid desert.

  I pushed myself faster, listening as best I could beyond the shuffling of my own body for any sign that Daniel might be near. Unable to turn even my head in the narrow confines, there was no way to tell how far I had come. The blackness all around blinded me to how far I still had left to go. I suddenly wished I had thought to get a better look at the cactus cluster before entering it—who knew how deep the spiny creature went.

  A sharp sting sliced my cheek. I paused while my fingers explored the tender flesh and came away wet with blood. I dried my cheek on my shirt and kept moving. The cacti spines began at first to catch bits of my shirt and then my hair. Their pulling and tearing became more insistent, more violent, pulling out strands of loose hair, ripping holes in the fabric the further I progressed.

  The hole was getting smaller all around me.

  But, in the distance, I thought I saw light. I lowered myself to the ground until my belly slithered across the dirt and my elbows now experienced the hard edged bite from the tiny rocks as I continued to drag myself forward. After my initial joy, finally the end, I began to worry that the light wasn’t real, that it was only a illusion generated by my brain. The dark seemed to swallow it back up so that only when I stopped and strained my eyes towards it was I able to focus on the watery features of less dark.

  Not a beacon of light, only brighter darkness which meant the promise of the open night and escape from this shrinking tunnel of dirt and thorns. Ahead of me, the way out was there. I knew it and the idea of suffering the dark and the tight for the time it would take to journey back the direction I had come only increased the tide of hysteria urging my body to stand and run. I needed out.